Save a life with a knife, New Southern Pacific station, World War II week by week

The new railroad station in San Luis Obispo was scheduled to start construction January 11. The new building was estimated to be $50,000 and a total cost of $96,000 to move the old wood frame building and tracks.
A centralized traffic control system had been installed the previous summer allowing more efficient travel over the Cuesta Grade bottleneck. The project was estimated to take 6 months and had been held up due to a shortage of wartime materials.

The Telegram-Tribune of January 9, 1943 had an unusually high number of war related local stories.

Mail delivery was expected to be reduced to once a day in San Luis Obispo. Wartime manpower shortages and an increase in volume to sort were blamed. The postmaster assured customers that incoming mail arriving early in the morning would be delivered. Outgoing mail was dispatched at night so patrons had ample time to post an answer the same day mail is received.

The parents of eight-year-old Dorothy Ann Brodeur were appealing to get their daughter back into Oceano Grammar School. She had been expelled when she failed to salute the flag for religious reasons. Jehovah’s Witness doctrine teach their children that based on Exodus 20:6:
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me.”
Her parents explained that she always showed full respect to the flag by standing at attention for each ceremony, all that is required of any civilian as defined in Section 7 of Public Law 623, 77th Congress, chapter 435, Second Session, passed by Congress June 22, 1942.
Five students in Paso Robles had been expelled for the same reason though several had been reinstated when they conformed to the school’s salute practice.

Hunting knives were being collected at the Telegram-Tribune office for the “Save a life with a knife” campaign. It was a volunteer drive to supply marines with knives for hand-to-hand combat.

Truck tires must be inspected by January 15 to qualify for replacements. A complete list of authorized tire inspectors will be printed in the Telegram-Tribune.

New Governor Earl Warren announced he was dismantling voice and telephone conversation recording equipment in the governor’s offices and assured assembly and senate leaders there would be no “spying” on them as they awaited conferences with him.

You reminded me of a certain item that always fascinated me concerning the CTC that was installed on the grade in 1942, since we know now that the station was built in 1943. There was a small metal decal stuck into the ground just below the main signal light at the start of the grade just before the Johnson St. overpass, small as it was back then. It read simply, “START CTC”. It had been there ever since 1942. A real relic.

After the SP (Rio Grande) had been purchased by the UP, they fixed up the depot area with a bridge that nobody used and new signaling, which, when they put it up, caused the disappearance of the little sign. I would really like to know what happened to it, if anybody might know. Did it just go into the dumpster? Did somebody retrieve it before that happened and add it to a collection somewhere?

I am also amazed as to how afraid everybody was during the war. They had to have been really spooked if they took the pledge so seriously. They had only gotten rid of the outstretched arm and hand that became the famous Heil Hitler salute a couple of years before because it reminded everybody of those millions in the films about Germany, as the official sign of loyalty to the American Flag. Now Freedom of Religion meant nothing the fearful, I suppose. It was an ugly time back then, I think.